‘The white horse is spouting music,’ she said.  ’Look!  See how it goes up to mother Mary.  She twists it round her distaff and spins it with her spindle.  See, marquis, see!  Spout, horse, spout.’

She lay silent again for a long time.  The old man sat holding her hand; her mother sat on the farther side of the bed, leaning against one of the foot-posts, and watching the white face of her darling with eyes in which love ruled distraction.  Dorothy sat in one of the window-seats, and listened to the music, which still came surging in, for still the fool blew the bellows, and the blind youth struck the keys.  And still the clouds gathered overhead and sunk towards the earth; and still the horse, which Dorothy had left spouting, threw up his twin-fountain, whose musical plash in the basin as it fell mingled with the sounds of the organ.

‘What is it?’ said Molly, waking up.  ’My head doth not ache, and my heart doth not beat, and I am not affrighted.  What is it?  I am not tired.  Marquis, are you no longer tired?  Ah, now I know!  He cometh!  He is here!—­Marquis, the good Jesu wants Molly’s hand.  Let him have it, marquis.  He is lifting me up.  I am quite well—­quite—­’

The sentence remained broken.  The hand which the marquis had yielded, with the awe of one in bodily presence of the Holy, and which he saw raised as if in the grasp of one invisible, fell back on the bed, and little Molly was quite well.

But she left sick hearts behind.  The mother threw herself on the bed, and wailed aloud.  The marquis burst into tears, left the room, and sought his study.  Mechanically he took his Confessio Amantis, and sat down, but never opened it; rose again and took his Shakespere, opened it, but could not read; rose once more, took his Vulgate, and read: 

‘Quid turbamini, et ploratis? puella non est mortua, sed dormit.’

He laid that book also down, fell on his knees, and prayed for her who was not dead but sleeping.

Dorothy, filled with awe, rather from the presence of the mother of the dead than death itself, and feeling that the mother would rather be alone with her dead, also left the room, and sought her chamber, where she threw herself upon the bed.  All was still save the plashing of the fountain, for the music from the chapel had ceased.

The storm burst in a glare and a peal.  The rain fell in straight lines and huge drops, which came faster and faster, drowning the noise of the fountain, till the sound of it on the many roofs of the place was like the trampling of an army of horsemen, and every spout was gurgling musically with full throat.  The one court was filled with a clashing upon its pavement, and the other with a soft singing upon its grass, with which mingled a sound as of little castanets from the broad leaves of the water-lilies in the moat.  Ever and anon came the lightning, and the great bass of the thunder to fill up the psalm.